The Princess Bride

I am, as you may have guessed from the books I read, a big fan of The Princess Bride the movie.  The blend of romance and action and witticisms are highly entertaining.  I could fill an entire blog post with things I love from that movie.  I think my first introduction to it was at a Star Wars convention where Nick Gillard, the choreographer for all the lightsaber fights in the prequels (whatever you say about the prequels, it is hard to complain about the lightsaber fights), said that the fight between the man in black and Inigo Montoya was his favorite fight in cinema.  I filed this factoid away and, when I finally saw the movie, did enjoy the fight and the rest of the film.

However, this is not review of the movie, this is a review of the book, which came before the movie.  Unlike many movie adaptations of novels, the author actually worked on the screenplay of the movie as well.  This gives the novel and the movie the same tone even if the content is not identical.  The novel is perhaps even funnier than the movie, there are some great parts in the introduction of Buttercup that had me chuckling out loud.

You will notice that on the cover of the novel it says "S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure".  For reasons unknown to me, Goldman has decided to write the novel as if he was abridging someone else's work.  This allows him to insert funny interjections into his own writing and "skip over" sections.  It makes for some entertaining parts even if it is a confusing tack to take.  

But he takes it further than that, in the introductions, he talks about travelling to Florin as if it is a real place and he discusses conversations with the owners of the Morgenstern estate over imaginary legal issues with abridging the book.  Stephen King (with all his ties to Florin) even makes a cameo.  However, the real overarching story of the introductions and forewords is Goldman's relationship with his own family and, due to the way the introductions are ordered with newest first, it is like peeling back layers of onion to see how he got to where he is today.  I don't know how much of the story in the introductions is real (Wikipedia tells me that very little of it is) but it is certainly an interesting story.

My one major complaint in this book is the portrayal of Buttercup, she is shown as pretty much helpless for much of the movie, relying on the men in her life to rescue her and save her from all of the perils.  I know that this is a cliche of this type of story but this takes it a step to far where, when the reader sees something from Buttercup's point of view, it is pointed out that she is bad at math and so cannot give the reader an accurate count of something.  That was irksome.

In short, this book is a somewhat unique literary construct and very enjoyable.  Anyone who like light-hearted fantasy should probably give it a read (and if you liked the movie, you should definitely read it).

Overall, I would give this book a 95%.